Robot 6

The Phoenix runs an awesome search for new junior talent

I love this: Neill Cameron is a great proselytizer for comics, regularly holding workshops for kids at any venue that will have him — schools, libraries, conventions, book fairs, shops, anywhere you can swing a Sharpie at a whiteboard. He’s also a regular contributor to the U.K.’s best kids comic, The Phoenix, and is using his blog to promote its new competition challenging children to create their own comics.

The Phoenix has been running the feature “How To Make Awesome Comics” by Cameron, under the guise of Art Monkey (U.K. comics remain terribly fond of pseudonymous metafictional editorial staff) since its first issue, and this competition is something of a culmination of those lessons (all available to download for free here, including some kid-friendly templates of blank pages with various panel layouts).

I’m someone who worries that the comic-reading demographic is aging all-too quickly, and also have been known to think out loud that it sometimes seems that the only people left reading comics are people harboring the ambition to create them. Neill Cameron might just have the solution to both those problems. Bring on the next generation!